A change must take place at the atomic level..to undo the power of death. A new perception of life emerges with 'true matter', the matter of the next species.
"The only hope for the future is a change in man's consciousness. It is left to men to decide if they will collaborate to this change or if it will have to be imposed upon them by the power of crushing circumstances." As the new post gradually infiltrates Mother's body it is the earth one wonders about. How is the earth going to absorb "this vibration as intense as a superior kind of fire"? "I see very few bodies around me capable of bearing it.... So what's going to happen?" It is the year of the first Chinese atomic bomb. Mother is 86. "A tiny, infinitesimal, stippled infiltration - the miracle of the earth!" A catastrophic miracle? Isn't that butterfly some sort of catastrophe to the caterpillar? "Death is no solution, so we are here seeking another solution - there must be another solution." Imperturbably, Mother descends deeper into the cellular consciousness and deeper still: "A kind of certainty, deep in matter that the solution lies there.... It is at the atomic level that a change must take place; the question concerns the state of infinitesimal vibrations in matter." Time veers into something else: "Perhaps it is into the past that I go, perhaps the future, perhaps the present?...." And even the laws of matter change: "As soon as you reach the domain of the cells, that sort of heaviness of matter disappears. It becomes fluid and vibrant again. Which would tend to show that happiness, thickness, inertia have been added on - it's false matter, the one we think or feel, but not matter as it really is." So what, then, would true matter be, the matter of the next species? "I am on the threshold of a new perception of life, as if certain parts of my consciousness were changing from the caterpillar state to the butterfly state...." And the earth groans and protests.... at what? "The whole youth seems to be seized by a strange vertigo...." Are we going to move on to a next species or not?
(D., a disciple, sent Mother an eighteenth-century account by a Japanese monk of the Zen Buddhist sect describing a method called "Introspection," which enables one to overcome cold and hunger and attain physical immortality. Mother reads a few pages, then gives up.)
[Hermès magazine, Spring 1963.]
It's better to work out your OWN system—if you want to work one out at all.
That's what people have always reproached Sri Aurobindo for, because he doesn't tell you, "Do this in this way and that in that way...." And that's precisely what made me feel that there was the Truth.
People cannot live without reducing things to a mental system.
They need a mechanism.
Yes, but as soon as there's a mechanism, it's finished.
The mechanism may well be very good for the person who found it: it's HIS mechanism. But it's good only for him.
As for me, I prefer not to have any mechanism!
The temptation comes sometimes, but... It's far more difficult without, but infinitely more living. All this [the Zen account] seems to me... I immediately feel something that's becoming dead and dry—dry, lifeless.
They replace life with a mechanism. And then it's finished.
(silence)
The mistake everyone makes is to consider—to believe—the goal to be immortality. Whereas immortality is just ONE of the consequences. In that Zen story, the goal is immortality, so THE WAY has to be found—hence all those methods. But immortality isn't a goal: it's just a natural consequence—if you live the true life.
You see, I am sure that D. (she doesn't say so, but I am sure of it) imagines that my goal is immortality! At any rate, it's the goal of many people here (!)... Actually, it's something secondary. It's ONE
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of the consequences, it's the sign (it can be regarded as a sign) that you are living the Truth, that's all. Though that's not even certain!
Immortality in this bag of bones, that's no fun!
(Mother laughs) Oh, indeed!... First it would have to be changed.
It wouldn't be worthwhile.
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